THE GIPSIES.
“Theirs is the deep lore of the olden time,
And in it are fine mysteries of the stars
Solved with a cunning wisdom, and strange thoughts,
Half prophecy, half poetry, and dreams
Clearer than truth, and speculations wild
That touched the secrets of your very soul.”
The General and his friends selected the best front sites that were left
vacant, and had their carriages turned around and the horses taken from
them and led away to distant stalls and fodder.
Then all reseated themselves and looked around them.
What a sight! what a crowd! what a turmoil! Far as the eye could reach
on every side a turbulent sea of humanity!
Where could the people all have sprung from? Had London emptied itself
of its population upon Epsom Heath? Had Paris, St. Petersburg and all
the great continental cities contributed their thousands? Had earth
given up her dead and ocean her prey to swell this crowd?
At first, as I said, all seemed but a turbulent sea of human beings; but
gradually individual images came out of the confusion.
Most prominent among these was the Grand Stand, an elevated and railed
platform or gallery where the gamblers in horseflesh congregated to make
up their betting-books and watch the race.
And most interesting, especially to ladies, was the Royal Box, with its
cushioned seats, surmounted by its crown and canopy of state all in
burning scarlet and gold. Neither the queen nor any of the princesses
occupied the Royal Box; only three or four of the princes, with their
lords in waiting, were present.
Yet toward that box many field-glasses were leveled—Anna’s among the
rest, for—
“A substitute shines brightly as a king,
Until a king be by.”
And failing the queen’s presence, the queen’s sons were objects of
absorbing interest.
“Neither Victoria nor any of the princesses are here,” said Anna,
lowering her glass with a look of disappointment.
“The queen nor the princesses ever come to the Derby. You may see them
at the Ascot Races, however, which are considered more aristocratic,
though very much less famous and popular than these,” replied Mr.
Spencer, who had left his seat in the gig to come and stand beside
General Lyon’s barouche and talk to the young people.
Anna next criticized the splendid dresses of the ladies who filled the
open carriages on this hill; and for no occasion do ladies dress more
splendidly than for the Derby Day.
“Good gracious! Half the milliners and jewelers’ establishments in
London and Paris must be emptied of their contents,” she exclaimed, as
her eyes roved over the various and dazzling display.
Out from the seething mass of humanity on the heath below came other
individual pictures. Here and there a poor little pale, hollow-cheeked
boy creeping feebly along and peering hungrily about for stray crusts
and bones, or apple parings, and orange peel, dropped from the luncheon
hamper of some prosperous feeder; now and then some grandly beautiful
woman whose flaunting dress and insolent air proclaimed her a very far
fallen angel; here and there some sunny-eyed child of Italy picking up a
few pennies by singing the “wild songs of his dear native land,” and
everywhere a leather-visaged gipsy crone trying to improve her own
fortunes by telling other people’s; everywhere professors of all sorts
of irregular arts and sciences; everywhere traders in all kinds of
contraband goods and chattels; and everywhere were the “efficient police
force” trying very successfully not to keep order; trying very hard not
to interfere with the lawful or unlawful practices of the poor, on this
one gracious day of their license and their happiness. A pickpocket, if
detected, would be arrested, of course; but as for the rest, gipsies
might tell fortunes, and beggars beg, and starving little children
pilfer, with none to punish them less merciful than the All-Father.
There was so much to see! such an infinite variety of life! The Derby
race, though the greatest feature of the day, was not a thousandth part
of the sights. If no race had come off, the assembly itself was well
worth coming to see, and sitting through a whole day to study.
Anna, Drusilla and General Lyon, were well content to occupy their seats
and spend their time in calmly contemplating the scene before them.
But the three young men, Dick, Spencer and Tredegar, wished to mingle
with the active life below, and so, making an excuse to go and get cards
of the race they bowed and left the hill and soon disappeared in the
crowd on the heath.
Many other gentlemen who were in attendance upon the ladies on the hill,
also left their carriages and went down; others who had been down were
now coming up;—so that there was a continual moving about of
foot-passengers.
“Look, look, Drusilla! there is a gipsy telling fortunes at that
carriage next but one to us, on the left. Grandpa, when she has finished
there, do beckon her to come here!” eagerly exclaimed Anna.
“Nonsense, my child! you never want the crone to tell your fortune.”
“Oh, yes, but I do indeed!” exclaimed Anna, excitedly.
“Tut, tut! you don’t believe in such tomfoolery!”
“No, I don’t believe in it of course; but I want to hear what the gipsy
will have to say to me for all that. Do watch her, grandpa; and, as soon
as she has done with those ladies call her here. Consider, I never saw a
gipsy except upon the stage—never saw a real gipsy in my life before,
and may never have a chance of seeing one again. Oh, do call her here,
grandpa, as soon as she is at liberty!”
“Well, well, my dear, you have the right to make a goose of yourself if
you please, and I will help you to do so. I will beckon her presently.”
“Ah, there’s Dick come back! Dick, come here, I want you!” called Anna.
And Dick, who had left his companions among their betting friends and
returned to the hill alone, now came up to the carriage.
“Dick, I’m so glad you’ve come back! There’s a gipsy telling fortunes at
that carriage—I want you to bring her here to tell ours.”
“Absurdity, Anna dear! you cannot mean to countenance such impostors?”
“Oh, Dick, that is so uncharitable! How do you know they are impostors?
How do you know but that they believe in their own art?”
“Do _you_ believe in it?”
“No; but I want to have some fun out of the gipsy.”
“Very well; I consent provided it is meant in jest and not in earnest.”
“And here, Dick, let us put the gipsy’s powers to a test. You come in
and sit down by me—then take little Lenny in your arms and play papa.
Little Lenny being fair and flaxen-haired and blue-eyed, with all the
Lyon features, is much more like me than like his own mother whom in
truth he does not at all resemble, and he will easily be taken for ours.
And the more easily because you and I look as if we had reached years of
discretion, while Drusilla seems but a child. Let us play a trick on the
gipsy, and ask her to foretell _our_ boy’s future.”
“Ha! ha! ha! that will be good!”
Not one word of the conversation since Dick’s return did Drusilla
hear—with her field-glass raised to her eyes, she was gazing at a
particular point on the Grand Stand; for, even in that boundless crowd,
her love had discovered her Alick—but, ah, discovered him among the
desperate gamblers of the betting ring!
She was blind and deaf to everything else.
Meanwhile the gipsy had drawn something nearer to the General’s
barouche. She was in fact standing beside the very next carriage, trying
to wheedle the occupants to have their fortunes told; but they all—a
circle of demure women—sternly warned the sibyl off and threatened her
with the police, at which she laughed and shook her crisp, black curls.
“The police would not trouble a poor gipsy wife like herself,” she said.
Then General Lyon bent over the side of his barouche, and showing her a
broad, silver crown, said:
“Come here, good woman, and tell these young ladies’ fortunes.”
“Ah, Heaven bless your handsome face, kind gentleman but I would like to
tell _yours_, too, for a fine fortune it has been, and is, and is to
be!” said the gipsy coming up to the carriage.
She was a small, slight woman, lithe and graceful like all her race,
with a swarthy and somewhat wrinkled face; with deep-set, brilliant
black eyes; crisply curling, tendril-like black hair; and well-marked
black eyebrows. She did not wear the traditional red cloak and plaid
head kerchief—those have long passed away even from among her tribe but
she wore rather tawdry and shabby finery—a striped skirt, a black shawl,
a straw bonnet trimmed with ribbons and flowers of many colors, red
predominating. And, upon the whole, her appearance was picturesque and
pleasing. Neither did she address her dupes in the poetic language of
the ideal gipsy—her words and manner were as real as herself.
“God save you, fair gentlemen! God save you, sweet ladies! Shall the
poor gipsy tell your fortunes? I see good luck in _your_ face, pretty
lady! I see great good luck! Give the poor gipsy a little, little bit of
silver to cross your hand with, and she will look and see what the great
good fortune is that is in store for you. Do, pretty lady,” she pleaded
in a very sweet, soft, wheedling tone as she held out her hand to Anna.
Mrs. Hammond dropped a shilling in her palm and, smiling, said:
“My fortune is already told, good woman, but I want you to foretell the
future of my dear little son here.” And she lifted Lenny from Dick’s
arms to her own lap.
Drusilla with a half-suppressed exclamation, now looked around.
But Anna gave her a comically beseeching took, and she yielded the point
and turned away.
The gipsy seemed not to notice this little by-play. She stood with her
hands folded upon her breast and her eyes fixed upon the ground.
“Come, gipsy! look upon my little son here and read his future,” said
Anna.
The gipsy woman raised her glittering black eyes, and, smiling, shook
her tendril-like black curls and said:
“Ah, pretty, fair lady! You think the poor gipsy can tell what is _to
come_, yet is so blind she cannot see what is _now_!—no!”
“What do you mean, good woman?”
“The boy is not your son, sweet lady.”
“Not my son! Why, look at him! He is the very image of me!”
“He is very like you, pretty lady; and that shows him to be of your
race; but he is not your son.”
“How do you know that?” questioned Anna, beginning to wonder at the
woman’s knowledge.
“By my art. You have no son, sweet lady. You will never have a son;
but——”
“Oh, don’t tell me that, gipsy! I didn’t give you a shilling to purchase
bad news.”
“A sovereign will not buy good news unless it is true, pretty lady; and
the gipsy’s words are true. I was going to tell you, though you have no
son, you will have many fair daughters, who will live and grow up and
marry and bear many fine sons, who will grow up and be great men in the
land.”
“This is foretelling the long future with a notable blessing!” laughed
Anna. “But I wish you had promised these fine sons to me instead of to
my future daughters. I don’t care anything about those very shadowy
young ladies. I don’t know them.”
The gipsy turned to Dick, and with her musical whine pleaded:
“Kind, handsome gentleman, do cross the poor gipsy wife’s hand with a
little, little bit of silver, for telling all about your wife’s
daughters and daughters’ sons, who will be rulers in the land beyond the
sea.”
“How do you know that lady is my wife?” inquired Dick, much astonished.
“Ah! good gentleman, can the gipsy know the future and not know the
present? Now, kind, handsome gentleman, give the poor gipsy a bit of
silver for good luck—the poor gipsy, sweet gentleman! who sees such
great, good fortune for you, and none at all for herself!”
“Then she is no true seeress, or she would see this piece of good
fortune coming to her,” said Dick, as in the largeness of his heart and
the extravagance of his habits he put into the gipsy’s hands the great
American gold coin, the double eagle, worth nearly five sovereigns.
The gipsy had never seen such a coin in her life. It inspired her, and
for once she broke into something like poetry.
“Ah, noble gentleman! you have made the poor gipsy rich and happy. Ah!
kind gentleman, may the stars rain down blessings on your head as bright
as their own beams! May flowers spring up under your footsteps wherever
you tread! May——”
“Dick!” laughed Anna, breaking into the discourse and cutting short the
rhapsody, “I shall lend you out to some of our old neighbors to walk
their barren gardens into bloom!”
“Come,” said Dick, to change the subject—“come, gipsy, tell my little
cousin’s fortune here. Will she live to grow up and get married?”
The gipsy turned at his bidding and looked at Drusilla whose childlike
face might have deceived eyes less keenly penetrating than those of the
gipsy seeress.
“Cross the poor gipsy’s hand with a little, little bit of silver, sweet
lady, and let her tell your fortune, my lady? The gipsy sees rare good
luck in your pretty face, my lady!” said the woman, in a wheedling tone.
What young creature, unsatisfied and with a deep heart stake in life, is
not in some degree a prey to superstition and credulity?—is not in
secret a would-be diviner of dreams, interpreter of omens, consulter of
the stars, reader of the future? The restless, longing, impatient heart
cannot wait the slow revelations of time; it would, with rash hand, rend
aside the veil and know the worst or best at once.
So it was with Drusilla now. She dropped a silver crown in the gipsy’s
hand, and then, half in faith and half in scorn of that misplaced faith,
she held out her palm.
The gipsy glanced slightly at the palm, but gazed earnestly in the face
of the young matron.
“My lady, you have been a wife and you are a mother, you have had
trouble—long trouble for so short a life, and a great trouble for so
gentle a lady; but it is gone now, and it will never come back any
more.”
“Thank Heaven for that,” murmured Drusilla.
“But you are not satisfied yet. There is something wanted, my lady. You
have a hungry, hungry heart, and a begging eye. You are longing and
famishing for something, my lady, and you will get it; for the hungry
heart is a mighty heart, and must prevail; and the begging eye is a
conquering eye that will overcome. Sweet, my lady, grief has gone away,
never to come back to you; and joy will soon come, never to leave you.”
“Oh, if I were sure that were true. If I could only believe that!”
exclaimed Drusilla, earnestly.
“You may believe it, my lady. You will soon see it.”
“How do you know it?”
“By my art,” answered the gipsy.
And then she turned to General Lyon and said, coaxingly:
“Ah! kind, handsome gentleman, you will cross the poor gipsy’s hand with
a little silver to help her, poor thing, and she will tell you such a
good fortune!”
“My fortune is all told these many years past, good woman,” said the
General, with a sigh that did not escape the gipsy’s keen eyes.
“Ah! don’t say so, good, dear gentleman. You have many long and happy
years of life to live yet.”
“I am an old man, gipsy; I have lived out my life.”
“Ah no, noble gentleman, not so. You are in your prime. Ah me! with your
grand form and handsome face, you could make many a sweet, pretty lady’s
heart ache yet if you chose; yes, that you could.”
“Come, come, my good woman, that is going a little too far,” laughed the
General, not displeased. What old gentleman ever is with a little
flattery?
“It is going a _great deal_ too far, grandpa. Come now, don’t let her be
putting courtship and matrimony into your head. I won’t have any young
grandmamma set up at Old Lyon Hall to lord it over me,” laughed Anna.
“Nonsense, my girl! The only way in which I may ever make any lady’s
heart ache, will be by getting the gout, and growing cross over it, and
growling at you and Drusilla from morning until night,” said the
General.
At that moment a policeman stepped up and put his hand on the gipsy’s
shoulder, saying:
“Come, Gentilly, I have had my eye on you this half hour. Move on.”
“Ah, bless the dear blue eyes of him,” coaxed the fortune-teller,
turning around and patting the man’s cheeks, “he’ll never make the poor
old gipsy wife move on, now that she has come up to her luck—such luck,
my darling. Only see what the grand, noble young gentleman has given the
poor gipsy. When the race is over, come up to my tent, pet, and have a
pot of porter and a plate of biled beef and carrots with his old
mother,” she added, patting him on the cheek again and turning from him.
“That’s the way, you see, sir—that’s always the way with Gentilly,” said
the policeman, apologetically, to the old gentleman.
“You know her?” inquired Dick.
“Know Gentilly? Bless you, sir, everybody on the race-course knows
Gentilly and her sister, Patience.”
“And you know no harm of her, I dare say, although you are a police
officer.”
“Well, sir, beyond——”
“Now, he is not going to tell lies on the old gipsy!—It will be three
o’clock. Come up at my tent for the biled beef and carrots and the pot
of porter,” said the fortune-teller, laying her hands upon the lips of
the police officer.
At that moment the two young men stepped up.
Gentilly turned to them immediately.
“Tell your fortune, sweet young gentlemen? Cross the poor gipsy’s hand
with silver to tell your fortune.”
“No, thank you,” laughed Spencer. “I have had my fortune told by members
of your tribe at least ten times to-day.”
“But here’s half a crown for you if you’ll only go away and not bother,”
added Tredegar, dropping the coin into the gipsy’s hand.
“Blessings on your handsome face, kind gentleman! Ah! I could tell you
of a fair lady who is thinking of you,” coaxed Gentilly.
“And thinking what a long-legged, lantern-jawed, lankhaired fright the
Yankee boy is, no doubt. All right; you can tell me that another time;
but go now and don’t bother.”
“Yes, Gentilly, you really must move on,” added the policeman.
And the fortune-teller, having gleaned all that she could from the
company, did move on.
And now an agitation like the movement of the wind upon the waves of the
sea or the leaves of the forest swayed the vast multitude.
“What’s the matter now?” inquired the General.
“The horses—they are coming,” answered Spencer.
“Is it the great race? Are they going to start?”
“Not just yet. They are being brought out and walked around the course
to be shown. Here they are!” exclaimed Tredegar.
All in the barouche stood up, adjusted their field-glasses and levelled
them at the race-course that encircled the field.
About thirty of the very finest horses in the world, decorated, and
ridden by small, light jockeys in parti-colored suits and fancy caps,
came on in procession and trotted around the course. Some three years
ago these horses “the cream of the cream” of the horse nobility, had
been bred and born to order, and from that time trained for this Derby—a
most careful and costly preparation of three years for a trial that
would be decided in half an hour. No wonder at the breathless interest
they excited even among those who had no stake in the race.
Involuntary exclamations of admiration and delight burst from the ladies
of our party.
“What beautiful creatures!” cried Anna.
“Pity they can’t _all_ win,” added Drusilla.
The train of horses trotted out of their range of vision, and
disappeared from view on another section of the circle.
“Is there time to lunch before the great race?” inquired Dick, with a
hungry glance at the hampers.
“No, sir; they start in fifteen minutes,” answered Tredegar.
Those fifteen minutes passed in silent waiting. Fortune-telling,
small-trading, ballad-singing, eating and drinking—all were suspended
until the trial upon which such immense stakes were laid should be over.
It was a holiday,—a festival; yet the hush that preceded the great event
of the day, was like the awful pause before an execution.
“At length the spell was broken. The word went forth:
“They’re starting!”
Three hundred thousand people were on their feet in an instant.
“They’re coming!”
Field-glasses were raised and necks were stretched, and eyes were
strained.
“Here they are! Here they are!”
Yes, here they are. The flying train of meteors flashing past! They are
gone while we look! Unaccustomed eyes cannot trace their flight, or
distinguish one horse from another in the lightning-like passage. A
moment more and the goal is won!
By whom?
It is not certainly known to the crowd just yet. They say:
“Lightfoot!”
“Wing!”
“Wonder!”
No, none of these. The number flies up on the winning post:
Number Seven!
And a thousand voices cry out:
“Fairy Queen!”
Yes, the favorite has won the race; and Mr. Chisholm Cheke has made his
fortune. Some few others have won much money, and many have lost, and
some are ruined.
Do not look towards the Grand Stand. The haggard faces of those ruined
gamesters will haunt your dreams to your life’s end.
It was wonderful how soon after the great act of this drama has been
performed that the uncompromised crowd subsided into comparative
calmness, and betook themselves again to their outside amusements—their
small trading, fortune-telling, ballad-singing, et cetera, while waiting
for the next race.
General Lyon ordered up his hampers, and his party had luncheon. After
they had finished, the fragments of their feast were distributed to the
little beggars that thronged around their carriage-wheels.
At four o’clock our party left the ground to return to London.
The evening drive back to London was attended with all the incidents of
the morning drive to Epsom—a hundred-fold increased—the crowd was
thicker, the crush closer, the noise louder, the dust higher, the danger
greater.
Through all these, however, our party passed safely, and reached their
apartments at the Morley House in time for an early tea.